


When Life Gives You Lemons

by KLCrazyness



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Other, Swearing, arcane warrior Lavellan, post-haven, swearing in elvish, swearing in tevene, wandering in the snow
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 14:30:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10743609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KLCrazyness/pseuds/KLCrazyness
Summary: Lavellan is having a bad day... or is that just a massive understatement





	When Life Gives You Lemons

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: may contain naughty words and some violance... and many spelling mistakes cuz im tired....
> 
> will edit later... maybe

Pain.

The first thing she knew was pain. Terrible, burining, blinding pain, splitting her head in two and pulling her out of unconsciousness. Pain so strong it made the rest of her feel numb.

...or was that the icy temperature?

As she breathed in, the cold stung her throat and nose like it often would in the wee hours of the morning at Haven. She lay there for a minute almost relishing the cold biting into her, soothing the aching in her body and cooling the hot pain in her head. But as she did a stabbing pains started making themselves present to her, primarily the thing that seemed to be jutting into her back.

Groaning she slowly moved her hand up to cup her throbbing head but immediately halted as her hands met sticky wet hair.

She paused in confusion. Memories of beverages, dark swaying dancing and waking to sunlight bouncing off a puke covered taven floor rushed through her mind. _Just some bad hangover maybe...hopefully._

She tried opening her eyes to shed some light on the situation but the darkness did not dissipate.

Confused, her hands moved across to her eyes trying to pry away whatever covered them. It was an actions she instantly regretted.

Pain exploded from her face as her fingers met shredded flesh soaked in warm wet blood. Now aware, the pain felt sharp, shooting back and forth across her face like some phantom was ripping rows of thread out of her raw skin. She cried out in shock before she could stop herself.

Horrified and confused, her clouded mind spun in a buring haze, grasping for answers.

_A dark figure walking through the flames “Enough!” Gnarled neck stretching to the sky, a blood chilling screech. Glowing red twisting around a stone orb. A single flame soaring across distant sky._

_The latch spinning. The heaving groan of the trebuchet. The rumble of the mountain about to come crashing down._

_Run! Not fast enough. A bone rattling shriek. Shwack! Pain. Falling…._

She gasped as she was bombarded with memories her whiling mind couldn’t accept. The image of the spiked tail before her face imbedded itself in her mind. _It must be a dream! I'm just stuck in the fade. In a nightmare. It can't be real!_

She was almost to the point of hyperventilating when she heard it. The soft sound of feet dragging along stone, echoing and distant. She froze as her instincts kicked in and made an effort to control her ragged breathing.

Wherever she was, she was not alone.

Remaining motionless she listened. The noise sounded distant and seemed to echo slightly. Perhaps she was in a cave? Feeling with her fingers she knew the floor was definitely stone. Very cold stone at that. And there appeared to be scatted wood planks under her, happily sticking themselves into her back. But the noise was slowly growing and meant someone or something was approaching.

Her heart speedup. Did they know she was here? Could they already see her where she lay? Should she attempt to hide when she couldn’t even make out her surroundings or would she alert them to her presence?

She never felt more helpless.

When she noticed more footsteps in the distance she made her decision.

As quietly as she could she rolled into a kneeling possession. She rose more slowly than she normally would in her disorientation. Her years training in the arts of stealth would truly be tested today.

Her fingers dusted over the floor below her searching. The stone was grooved, Some sort or intricate pattern. she cocked an eyebrow at the before hissing in pain. A temple marker maybe? A directory sign for the path? Just about at the end of her reach her right hand brushed against cold metal. She held back a gasp of hope as she found what she was looking for. Her fingers traced the smooth blade along the fuller to find their home at on the familiar fabric wrapped around the handle.

A low moan echoing somewhere to her left reminded her of her limited time. She internally cursed and she was forced to abandon her other dagger and make her way forward.

It was painfully slow and clumsy for her to sneak without her eyes. She had been trained before to fight with a blindfold but it was different in practice.

She moved perpendicular to the direction of the noise until she found a wall of solid stone, a rock face? It spanned as far as she could reach either side. She stopped and listened.

Footsteps crunching on loose gravelly soil. Low moans. Dripping.

The sounds were slightly more echoed than before… maybe… it felt like it's direction changed which could possibly mean it was coming from a small opening, possibly a door if she could beat the thing to it she could possibly ambush it as it entered the room.

She inched along the stone, switching she dagger to her left hand so her right hand could feel along it while keeping her back to the wall. It curved around to the source of the sound. The foot's step were getting close.

Her left hand tightened on her dagger. Should she go straight for the kill? What if it was friendly? The moan reminded her of the injured she had seen in haven… but also the dead she had seen in the fallow mire.

Her right hand found an indent into the wall right when the moan changed to an enraged cry and she heard the sound of something moving through the air towards her.

 _Shit!_ She thought as she barely ducked in time and brought her left hand forward to sink the dagger into something cold and wet before her.

Her instincts had her aim for where the heart would be but, recalling the undead form the Fallow Mire, this was hardly the right idea.

A rattly moan escaped the creature as it moved to strike her again.

She reached her right hand forward to find its neck and brought her left hand up to stab it in the face. Her dagger ended up lodged in its skull but not before awkwardly hitting off the bone in its eye socket first.

The creature jerked and moaned as it fell forward and she shoved it off before it could land on her, her heart beating wildly. It hit the ground with a thud and its weapon clanged on the ground echoing though the cave.

She held her breath for a second before she heard more moaning rising from somewhere in the distance.

_Fenedhis!_

She was getting everything wrong. She was clumsy, stupid and absolutely panicked by her lack of sight.

_“Breath Da’len” her master stood mere before her and yet she had not managed to hit him yet “an arcane warrior must be of composed mind on the battlefield. Find your centre, plot your course, and only then strike”_

She breathed in slowly.

 _Find your centre._ She was defending Haven. She had fallen. The escape route? She was in a tunnel under it? It would make sense.

 _Plot your course._ The others must be near. They would have used the same tunnels or ones near it. She had to find them but her way was blocked. She could tell her way out was through the undead, she could feel a draft coming from the doorway she stood by. She would have to go through them.

Her enemies were undead, spirit origin, that meant she couldn't use the fade to sneak past them. Though she could use it to be invisible to the creatures of the waking world it only highlighted her presence to those originating from the fade. Lucky she hadn't thought to use it before. She would have to stick to her non-magical abilities if she wanted to get by unnoticed. It was that or just blast her way out, but her mana pool was feeling rather low after the battle at haven and if there were more around then she could hear, she would be in big trouble.

She breathed out.

Raising her right hand she wiped off the blood dripping down her face like tears and tore off some of the fabric wrapped around her waist to bandage her eyes. She couldn't sneak around smelling of blood, not hers at least. After wrapping the bandage securely around her head, making sure not to cover her ears she reached into her pocket for some plants she always kept on her to cover the scent of blood and tucked them into the bandages. 

_Then strike._

Fluidly, like she had been trained to do, she reached down to the corpse and sent her dagger into its other eye, _always double tap_ she thought, and rose silently moving through the doorway.

It was slow progress moving through the tunnels.

They were large uneven rocky caverns that made it hard for her to feel her way through without stumbling on stray rocks or making what felt like roundabout trips.

She had only come across a handful of undead wandering the passages and had taken them down with a slight bit more grace than the first. She then kept moving towards the origin of the draft until it became a howling wind and she knew the exit was nearby. That and the snow patches starting to appear under her numbing feet more constantly.  

There had been no sign of the inquisition as yet, she must have fallen into a different tunnel to the one they used. But the tunnels were definitely man made and therefore would lead somewhere… she hoped. She had found wooden wall braces in this section and parts of the floor were planked over. she was toeing her way over the uneven wooden planks when she felt it.

A tingle flashed across her left palm and she heard the crackle of a fade rift before her.

_Andraste's tits was this the worst day ever! Of all the-_

Her blood chilled when she heard the shriek of despair demons. Multiple. And she knew she had finally discovered that shit creek her human friends had always warned her about.

She jumped to the right banging into another wall as ice flew past her grazing her left shoulder through her coat. There shrieks echoed around the cavern making it impossible to pinpoint their location, they floated so she couldn't hear them move either. Desperately, she threw fire out in front of her praying it hit at least one.

The shrieking continued and she had no clue if she hit or not. Cursing, she only just heard the whoosh as more projectiles flew her way.

One struck her thigh and she stumbled to her knees, hands flying to her ears as their cries grew louder.

 _It was over, she was done, she couldn't fight this,_ she thought as she despaired.

She heard more ice missiles flying at her and desperately shot her left hand out to stop them. But instead of feeling the ice sink into her flesh she heard the cackle of a fade rift and the demons screams intensified before fading away.

She was frozen in her crouched position for a couple of seconds as the rift whispered to her in the dark before she heard it close like she had dozens of time before.

She lifted her head out of her arms. Besides the howling of the wind and dripping of the cave it was silent.

“Well… that’s new” She flexed her tingling hand around her dagger. The mark was meant to be able close _and open_ fade rifts after all.

She shook her head. Now it didn't matter, she pulled the ice shard from her leg and shakily stood up, she had to continue on if she had any chance of finding the inquisition.

She walked down a wooden ramp and directly across the opening to where the wind was coming from and continued on until she was without a doubt out of the cave.

The walls were gone and she tiptoed along snow covered boards until she felt the edge.

_Where to go from here?_

The wind now pounding into her right side was too loud to hear anything else. She could probably walk right past them and not know.

She had to think.

Wind normally blows in an east or west direction. From her guess it must be night or early morning. Assuming she wasn't out for long… also she couldn't feel any sun… so taking that into account the wind would be blowing east to west… so forward was North right?

She put her hand to her forehead and winced as she put pressure on her bandages.

“Gah! Why?! Why is everything gone wrong right now!” she yelled into the wind.

The wind seemingly ignored her.

She let out a huff. _“Breath Da’len, find your centre”_

She would have closed her eyes if she could but instead bowed her head.

The chancellor had said something about a pilgrimage but she had no clue what that entailed or where it lead. But the arrow, the signal, it had been to the east of Haven so they must have at least started in that direction….

It wasn’t much but it was all she had to go on.

She cautiously squatted down and hung her foot of the edge of the boardwalk until she felt snow below her foot and hopped down. She then turned into the wind and started walking arms held out protectively in front of her to protect herself from the wind and any objects she may walk into.

She couldn't use her feet to feel the ground any more. For one, they were starting to go numb with cold, and two, she had to pull her feet out of the snow with every step. This was going to be one slow trip and if she wasn't lucky she would no doubt freeze to death before the end.

* * *

 

Is was some time later, long after she had sheathed her dagger as her fingers had become to numb to hold it.

She was almost delirious as she wandered into the wind, head pounding, legs aching, surrounded by the howling of wolves but unable to really care. _At least it would be a faster death_ she mused. At this point she was more in danger of bludgeoning herself to death with the amount of rocks and trees she had walked into so far. It made her thankful for the cold, with the numbness as at least she couldn't feel the countless bruises and injuries on her arms and legs.

That was until she yet again stubbed her toe on something. Hard.

“FENEDHIS LASA!” she sucked in air through her nose which only made the cold stinging worst “Vishante Kaffas, you nug-humping piece of cra-, by the fucking stone! I will sure kick you in ‘em! you son of a halla lickin-” then she realised the thing she kicked was metal.

She reached down to find a- what was that thing humans put over the fire to hold up their pots? She knelt down by it and let her hand wander on the ground to find the ashes of the camp fire.

But her heart sunk at the feeling of cold ashes. _Of course it would be…_

She lets out a shaky breath. She would never catch them, it's pointless, she might as well lie down and let the wolves have her.

She lifts her head up in an attempt to look to the sky. Master always told her the stars would guide her but she would never see them again.

Even kneeling she couldn't fight exhaustion enough to stop herself from swaying. How good it would feel to collapse into the soft snow and go completely numb. They probably all thought her dead anyway…

She laughed at that. It wouldn't be the first time.

She remembered Bull back at Redcliffe...

 _“You're not dead? You’re_ supposed _to be dead”_

_“Well I’m no more dead than you”_

_“Urgch! Now dead and not dead are up for debate, that's wonderful”_

She laughed to herself but then remembered solas at the castle… seeing him there was less funny.

When she had found him he had just been brimming with good news: the elder one taking over the world, the assassination of some empress causing chaos, a demon army…

All because she had disappeared.

…

She grit her teeth. She couldn't give up now.

And with that she staggered to her feet, faced the wind and fought to keep putting one foot in front of the other. she had to.

In a couple steps her shin hit stone. She hissed in anger but just climbed up over it.

After a minute or so she ran into a wall of stone scraping her abused right arm and knocking her off balance.

She kneeled shaking in the snow, again, trying to find the energy to keep going. She was just about to lift herself up again when she heard voices in the distance.

“It's her!”

“Thank the maker”

Vaguely her mind confirmed the voices to be Cullen’s and Cassandra’s before she finally gave in and toppled into the beckoning snow.

**Author's Note:**

> My inquisitor isn't canon dalish but slightly divergent. This is cuz I used to love being the OP arcane warrior in DAO and am pissed you can be in the most recent games. I really wish it was more flexible in DA2 & DAI so i'm writing this character as such. I also don't want her too mary sue so i'm giving it a flaw, eg fade shroud don't work on spirits or demons (which stealth don't seem to work on them in the game anyway) and making so it's vulnerable to them. It makes sense to me seeing as they would be kinda part of the fade to so you going into it a bit to be invisible/negate damage shouldn't work on the, like kinda making you more spirit like so you take more spirit damage. That's my logic anyhow, let me know what you think.


End file.
